Small Valley Center history museum draws big crowds

J. Harry Jones

Bob Lerner, a Valley Center History Museum volunteer, looks at a guest book. More than 40,000 people have signed the book since the small museum on Cole Grade Road opened 15 years ago.

Bob Lerner, a Valley Center History Museum volunteer, looks at a guest book. More than 40,000 people have signed the book since the small museum on Cole Grade Road opened 15 years ago. (J. Harry Jones)

The Valley Center History Museum, chock full of exhibits, memorabilia and historic documents having to do with everything Valley Center, has done quite well for itself since opening 15 years ago.

Recently, the number of visitors who have signed the guest book at the small museum on Cole Grade Road hit 40,000. That’s 40,000 line entries and doesn’t count couples, or families, or groups that signed in together.

Among these group was number of men who drove down from Muscle Beach in Venice, Calif., a couple of years ago to view a Steve Reeves exhibit.

Reeves lived in Valley Center for two decades after he retired. He was a professional bodybuilder and actor who in the 1950s starred in movies as Hercules, Goliath and Sandokan, the pirate. The display was devoted to his bodybuilding days because Reeves’ estate (he died in 2000) had given the museum numerous items including trophies and photos from when he won Mr. World, Mr. Universe and Mr. America titles.

“A lot of people came in to see it, but it was a really unusual crowd,” said museum volunteer Bob Lerner. “One Saturday afternoon I dropped in here to pick something up when there’s this big, black van that shows up and seven guys come out. They all had arms like watermelons.”

The men told Lerner they had heard about the exhibit and all respected Reeves so much that they drove down just to view the collection. It was all the talk in the bodybuilding world, they said.

The Reeves exhibit is no longer on display because the museum has so many items in storage it has to keep rotating exhibits. But some exhibits are so popular they have become permanent.

One of these is the John Wayne exhibit case. For many years the famous actor owned a home in nearby Pauma Valley where he would come to escape the Hollywood scene. Over time, numerous photographs and other Wayne mementos had been donated to the museum.

In 2007, the 100th anniversary of Wayne’s birth, one of the museum’s docents suggested to the museum’s board of directors that a John Wayne exhibit would be nice.

“I said who in the hell cares about somebody who couldn’t act — I’m not a John Wayne fan,” said Lerner “But the docent said Wayne was very, very popular.”

Lerner turned to the museum’s curator, Marjorie Deskovick, and told her “if 100 people show up in the next six months specifically to see this, I’ll eat that hat” pointing to one of Wayne's cowboy hats.

The exhibit opened on a Saturday and the museum had arranged to have a Wayne impersonator on hand. The gimmick had gotten some advance press.

An hour before the museum’s doors opened a line had already started forming. “When we opened at noon we had 300 people waiting to get in. I asked Marge ‘where’s the hat?’”

Lerner reneged on the promise. He did not eat the cowboy hat and 11 years later it is still on display.

“I know he didn’t want (the Wayne exhibit), but I insisted,” Deskovick said. “It’s still there.”

Other permanent displays include one about Betty Crocker, the fictional character found on General Mills cake mixes. In the 1920s, home economist Agnes White played Betty Crocker in a radio cooking show and advertising campaign. In the 1940s, she and her husband William Tizard purchased Valley Center’s historic Clark House.

“We have a steady parade for Betty Crocker,” Lerner said.

Other permanent exhibits are dedicated to Rancho Guejito, the large, privately held property in Valley Center whose owners have been very generous to the museum, and to the late Irving Salomon, former owner of Rancho Lilac and at one time President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s ambassador to the United Nations. Salomon’s family have been strong supports of the museum since before it opened.

Back in 2014 members of the all-volunteer museum staff started analyzing all the signatures in the guest book and documenting where everyone had come from. The book has a place for names, hometowns and comments which often read “Wonderful Museum” or “Awesome.”

They figured out that 49 of the 50 United States were represented, but not North Dakota. So Lerner wrote a press release that was distributed to the local media and later picked up by the Associated Press. Several newspapers in North Dakota and at least one television station ran short pieces about it.

Within six months, 16 different North Dakota entries had been recorded in the book, Lerner said. Almost everyone had said they had seen the stories and had made a point of coming to Valley Center while vacationing in San Diego.

The museum at 29200 Cole Grade Road is open Tuesday through Saturday from 12 noon to 4 p.m. Admission is free. For more information, visit vchistory.org or call (760) 749-2993.